Triple F Breakfast

I went to visit my parents, and sister, and Amy and Ginny, for Thanksgiving, which was great, as always.

Early in December, a young woman who had been sitting for hours with her father in the ICU left the room while a brief procedure was performed. While she was in the cafeteria, she heard a Code Blue called for her father’s room and went to ask the front desk, “What does that mean?”

The answer was, “Go back to his room.” By the time the daughter got back to the ICU, her father was gone. We sat together, mostly in silence. After awhile, the daughter asked, “What do people usually do?” She meant, what do people usually do right after their parent dies?

I said that, in my observation, they do pretty much what she was doing: sit there and let feelings and thoughts rise to the surface. “You’re doing it right,” I assured her.

I considered that she might actually be in shock and thought of a breathing technique useful in such a situation, but then considered how I would feel if someone in my family had just died and someone came in and told me how to breathe, so I did it myself and it was indeed calming. (Box breath: inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four.)

After a while, the daughter said, “Odd that someone has closed his eyes for him when he could do that all by himself yesterday. Odd that the doctors are in the hallway discussing the patient next door, when this has happened in here. How do they do that every day? Yesterday they were outside this room, discussing my father.”

I asked something I don’t think I’ve asked before in these words: “What did he love?” Rather than the more clinical, “What did he enjoy?” His daughter told me what he loved, and I put all of it in my chart note.

Later I visited a fellow with serious illness and onerous treatment, and asked him the same thing: “What do you love?” He looked blank for a second and then his face lit up: “Two things: Music. And food.”

He asked about the End of Life Options Act. “Is that suicide? Like, what would the Catholics say?”

Catholics are now OK with it, which he seemed relieved to hear, having been Catholic in his youth. But later I remembered something I was taught at County Hospital about not answering that question in a way that gives someone permission to commit suicide (not that the EOLOA is synonymous with suicide). I think that was in the context of mental illness, but it would probably be better to say—not “What do you think about whether this would be suicide?”, which would be kind of obvious and kind of lame, but to try to understand what is hard about the life the person is living.

At County Hospital, I visited a quite old and quite miserable man for whom nothing was going right. He said that he was unable to tell his relatives how lousy he feels. He said they make it clear they don’t want to hear it. When I left, he said, “It’s been so wonderful to meet you. What will I do when you’re gone?”

Late in December, I went to Berkeley to have lunch with Lisa M. at a wonderful Mexican place. 

On Christmas Eve, Tom and I drove in his co-worker’s car to Sacramento for a splendid Christmas Eve with his family, including another of Eva and Sarah’s amazing feasts. Tom’s mother, Ann, very generously put Tom and me up in a hotel right across from her place that night. She got us a suite so that we could have separate rooms! The next day, we had Christmas dinner at the place where Ann lives, and spent several hours just hanging out. We had to do this in the lobby, because Ann got new carpet not long ago and three seconds after I went into her apartment, I felt I might keel over. Thank goodness I had this experience before they put new carpeting in my apartment (because of the flood last May). I told the building owner I would love it if they could install something not toxic, and she said that should not be a problem.

My friend Lesley and I got season tickets to Berkeley Rep and went for the first time at the end of December. We had lunch at Au Coquelet beforehand, and saw Becky Nurse of Salem.

I told my father on the phone about my salmon salad, which involved, at the time, canned salmon from Vital Choice, black pepper, toasted sesame oil, hot oil, mayonnaise, minced fresh ginger, pressed fresh garlic, and a chopped pickle.

“Can you even taste the fish?”, asked Dad. Then he told me about his Triple F Breakfast: fish, fiber and fruit. This is half-and-half canned mackerel and salmon, oat bran, and blueberries.

“How does that taste?”

“I’ve gotten used to it.” It must be enjoyable, because the final sentence of the official recipe, provided later via email, reads, “Mix with teaspoon and enjoy.”

Here’s the exact recipe, in case you’re ready to enjoy radiant good health:

Add to bowl and set aside:
   heaping 1/3 cup frozen herbicide-free Canadian wild blueberries

Add to 1-quart saucepan:
   1/4 cup    organic oat bran
   2-1/2 oz   mixed Alaska sockeye salmon / Pacific jack mackerel
   2/3 cup    warm tap water

Place saucepan on medium heat and stir occasionally. Remove from heat just before contents begin to stick to bottom of the saucepan. Pour and scrape saucepan contents onto the blueberries in the bowl. Mix with teaspoon and enjoy.